


This Face that Hides Me

by morganoconner



Series: Out of the Dark [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Supernatural, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Pre-Canon, Shapeshifting, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganoconner/pseuds/morganoconner
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil is forced to reveal his secret to Clint. It doesn't exactly go the way he expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Face that Hides Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Misachan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misachan/gifts).



> This is a prequel to [Out of the Dark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/440939), so obviously contains some elements from _Supernatural_. Mostly though, this one is _Avengers_ -verse only (pre-movie), and you certainly don't need to read the other story to understand this one.
> 
> Many thanks to Miya for the beta!

If Phil had ever taken the time to think about how he might have told Clint the truth, these are not the circumstances he would have hoped for. Hiding out in a damp, cold, filthy sub-basement with an entire faction of Hydra after them, calling for Clint's immediate surrender. Clint himself almost too hurt to move, bleeding from a long gash down his side and bleary-eyed with pain and fatigue.

No, this is not how he might have pictured it going. For one, Phil always assumed he'd be very drunk if the topic ever came up.

Hell, this was supposed to be an easy mission. Important – important enough that the director himself is waiting for them at the rendezvous point – but easy. But then, when do things ever go according to plan in this line of work?

"Barton," he says, crouching down and cupping Clint's cheek, bringing his face up so he can make sure Clint is still conscious. "Still with me?"

"Yeah, boss," Clint replies, but he doesn't sound it. He sounds like he's on the verge of passing out. "Got a plan yet?"

Phil swallows. "Yes," he says. "But I don't think you're going to like it much."

Clint blinks at him, his eyes narrowing. "Coulson?"

"I need to buy you time," Phil says. "You need to get out and get us some backup, and I can get you the time you need." It's Clint they're after, but Clint will never survive whatever torture they have planned for him, not in the state he's already in. As it is, they'll be very, very lucky if Clint can make it out under his own power right now.

"S'not you they want," Clint says, grabbing Phil around his wrist. His grip is weak, but Phil doesn't pull away immediately.

"It's not me they're going to get," he promises. "I need you to trust me." _Just for long enough_. "Can you do that, Barton?"

Clint stares at him, searching his face. "Yes, sir," he finally says. Phil wants to smile at the implied _duh_ in his voice, but it's tempered by the knowledge that that trust probably won't last very long after this.

Still, he forces a nod and steps back, shedding his clothes as quickly as possible and letting his features melt away, closing his eyes so he won't have to see the look on Clint's face as he changes.

He's fast. He's always been fast, according to his mother, and all the years he's spent locking this part of his nature away hasn't changed it. The speed is a blessing now, even through the haze of pain a shift always brings. Bones cracking, one thick layer of skin sluicing off to be replaced by another, teeth shifting and hair growing and brain _melting_ until, just as suddenly as it started, it's over. He drops to his knees, giving himself a moment to catch his breath. He can already feel the tumble of new images in his head, thoughts and memories that don't belong to him, and he hates it, this invasion of privacy he can't stop. He tries to ignore it, prays he won't retain any of it later.

When he finally feels his heart begin to settle, he opens his eyes, and sees the world as Clint sees it.

It's _incredible_. Phil has better than 20/20 vision and gets his eyes tested regularly to make sure there are no problems, but Clint's eyesight makes him feel like he's been half-blind his whole life. Everything is sharper, clearer, brighter. He can make out a droplet of water fifty feet away as it falls from the ceiling, see each of a hundred smaller drops as it splashes on the ground, and the range of his peripheral vision is downright astounding.

He's always joked that this is Clint's superpower, but now he's not so sure how much of a joke it really is.

Although for all his newfound beyond-perfect vision, he's having trouble looking in the one place he knows he needs to. And since Phil Coulson has never been a coward, he finally forces his eyes to Clint, bracing himself for whatever he's going to see in his face.

Clint's eyes are wide, and his jaw is hanging open in shock. Shock is good, though. Shock is better than a lot of the other things Phil was expecting. " _Coulson?_ " he breathes.

Phil nods, dragging himself back to his feet and hastily pulling his pants and shirt back on, grateful that they still fit, if not particularly comfortably, especially around the new, more bulging muscles in his arms. _Jesus, Barton_. "Surprise," he says, not entirely ready for the way his voice – _Clint's_ voice – rumbles deep in his throat.

To his credit, it only takes a little bit of blinking for Clint to get his face back under control, and then he's straightening, his hand pressing to the wound in his side while his eyes rove over Phil's new body. "You're a mutant?" he asks. "Why didn't you ever –"

"Not a mutant," Phil says. His lips twist wryly, gaze going to the unpleasant, viscous pile of what used to be human-like skin that's now literally melting two feet away. "More like a monster. And we don't have time to stand around discussing it. Go."

Clint nods, because when it comes right down to it, he's always done what Phil's asked of him when it matters. "Yes, sir." He takes a fast step forward, placing a hand on Phil's shoulder before Phil can back away. He holds Phil's gaze for a long moment and then unslings his quiver and bow from over his shoulder, placing them both in Phil's hands. "Be careful. That body better come back in one piece or I'm gonna be pissed." And then, ridiculously, _impossibly_ , he grins. "Bad copy or not."

Phil laughs in an awed sort of disbelief even as he places his own gun in Clint's hand, the only thing Clint will have the strength to shoot right now. " _Go_ , Barton," he orders, and Clint does.

~

Later, much later, though Phil has long since lost track of time, Clint finds him again, something Phil never doubted for a moment he’d do. Phil is tied to a chair nursing several broken bones, electrical burns, knife lacerations, and a few loose teeth, and he can barely see past the blood in his eye to make out the horrified expression on Clint's face, but he thinks that might be a blessing right now. It's been a long time since he felt this weak, but damn it, their knives had been laced with silver. He hadn't expected that, and it had cost him.

From behind, he feels a hand take hold of his wrist, hears the telltale sound of something picking the lock on the cuffs. "Director," he rasps, and his arms fall painfully to his sides. He can't even bring them up far enough to rest them in his lap.

There's a rustling sound as Fury stands and comes around to look at the damage head-on. The look in his single eye is worse than the one in both of Clint's. "You took a hell of a beating, Coulson," he says.

"Yes, sir." Phil feels himself slumping forward and can't make a single move to stop it, but Clint catches him and kneels down to hold onto Phil for a long moment.

"How long have they had you?" Clint asks angrily. "I was only gone for a few hours!"

Phil laughs, even though it hurts like hell. "Pretty much the whole time," he admits. "Not so good with a bow, and you had my gun." Even his own strength and fighting skills hadn't helped, once they got their knives buried in his flesh. He looks back up at Fury. "I'll be fine, sir. I just need to shift, I'll be good as new."

Fury raises an eyebrow. "Yeah, don't see that happening soon. I know how much energy a shift takes, Coulson. It's in your file."

 _Damn_.

"Idiot," Clint mutters, but somehow, he manages to make it sound fond, and he's embracing Phil now more than simply holding him up, like he's afraid to let go. Phil can feel the way his arms are trembling, and he wonders how much adrenaline Clint forced the medics to give him to come to his handler's rescue. If he's damaged himself further, Phil might kill him, but Clint wanting to be here at all still makes something squeeze hard in Phil's chest.

"Come on, you two," Fury says with a long-suffering tone. "We'll let Agent Romanoff clean up here so you can get your asses to medical."

"Yes, sir," they reply together. Clint grins at him, and Phil feels his face flush. He can practically _hear_ the director's eye rolling.

"Don't do that again," Fury orders. When he turns away, he's muttering something about the world not needing two goddamn Bartons, and Phil would smile if he wasn't too busy trying not to pass out.

~

Phil is in medical for two days before he finally feels strong enough to shift. He’s kept in the isolation ward to prevent questions, and only the people who are already aware of his ability are allowed to see him. Which leaves a single doctor on the staff – Callahan is a good man, and he's seen too much to be fazed by Phil's nature, even after it was first explained to him in excruciating detail when Phil was recruited – as well as Fury and now Clint.

Clint visits him several times a day.

In itself, it's not so strange. They've become friends over the years they've worked together, and visiting each other's sickbeds is practically routine these days. But like this, with his secret out, Phil had expected…hesitance, at least, if not outright hostility.

Instead, he gets compassion. Like the first night Phil was here, when Clint had stared him down and demanded, "How'd they get you so bad anyway, boss?"

"Silver," Phil had replied, a tad reluctantly. "It's one of the only things on Earth that can really hurt me."

"What else can?" Clint had asked, and maybe it was the worried crease between his brows that had made Phil reply without even the slightest hesitation. Without wondering for even a second if he was safe trusting Clint with the information.

"Iridium," he'd told him. "But that stuff is so rare you'll probably never see it in your life. So there's no need to act like an overprotective guard dog, all right?" Clint had watched him for a long moment before finally giving a single small nod.

So, yes. Clint still speaks to him as though nothing has changed, as though when he looks at Phil, he's looking into the same eyes he's known all along and not the ones he sees in a mirror every morning. Phil knows it has to be awkward, he _knows_ it, but somehow, Clint never seems anything but at ease when he takes his usual hard plastic chair beside the bed.

Phil doesn't have the slightest clue how to feel.

When he finally does have the energy for a shift, it almost seems anticlimactic. He lets his body melt back into the form it's more familiar with, the form he's taken as _his_ , and as he shifts, the injuries he'd sustained get shucked right along with the old skin. He breathes easier than he has in two days, dresses in the suit that Fury was kind enough to bring him, and leaves with a nod to Dr. Callahan.

He doesn't immediately go to find Clint, and maybe that's why he has a lingering feeling of something unfinished, something left incomplete, for the rest of the day.

~

It's Clint who finds him the next afternoon, as he's finishing a pile of paperwork in his office.

"Heya, Coulson," he says, flinging himself onto Phil's couch.

Phil gives him his best unimpressed look.

Clint grins. "Damn, I've missed that smile."

Phil only just refrains from rolling his eyes, but he's also hiding an actual smile. "Is there something I can help you with, Agent Barton?"

"Yep," Clint says. "You can follow me down to the shooting range."

"The shooting range," Phil repeats, raising an eyebrow. That certainly isn't the answer he'd expected.

"Yep." Clint grins again, doing absolutely nothing to explain himself. Which, really, is par for the course with Clint.

Phil doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of asking, he really doesn't, but… "Why are you dragging me to the shooting range, Agent Barton? I assume you haven't forgotten how to get there yourself."

Clint stands up again, shoving his hands into his pockets as he suddenly dons a very serious expression Phil isn't used to seeing on his face. "Way I see it, boss, we've got to brush up on _your_ skills. Knowing how to shoot a bow might have saved you a lot of grief the other day. Not to mention saving _my_ face from that pretty makeover you let them give you."

Phil flushes, because damn it, he knows that. It's not a skill he ever thought he'd need, never one he'd thought to learn, and yeah, he'd maybe spent a few of his hours in medical kicking himself for it, but… "Really?" he asks, just to be sure.

Clint nods.

There's a faint twinge of panic sitting in his gut, roiling around and making him a bit nauseous, and Phil isn't sure if it's because of the conversation they haven't had yet, or the idea of someone – _Clint_ – seeing him fail so miserably at something. Maybe it's a little of both.

But Phil has never been one to back down from a challenge, even the really hard ones, so he pastes on an indulgent smile and sweeps a hand towards the door. "Lead the way, Barton."

~

Clint brings out his own personal bow – the collapsible one, the one Phil knows he considers his baby – and grins at Phil when he catches sight of Phil's raised eyebrows. "Not nervous, are you, boss?" he asks.

Phil gives him a dry look, but takes the bow when Clint presses it into his hands. He handles it gently, a little bit warily. He's seen it, of course, dozens of times over dozens of missions. And while he'd even handled it himself on that last one, there hadn't been time to explore it, learn the shape and feel and weight of it. Before that, in the past, he'd always felt it was too much of an extension of Clint; touching it without permission would have been far too invasive. Too personal.

"She's a beauty, isn't she?" Clint says, grinning again. There's pride in that look now, Phil thinks. "I almost thought she wasn't gonna make it back. The team that did the sweep after had a hell of a time finding where the Hydra goons stashed her after they took her from you."

"I'm sorry," Phil says. "I should have taken better care of…of her."

"Of _yourself_ ," Clint grunts.

Phil doesn't know what to say to that, so he goes back to looking at the bow he's still holding. It really is like a work of art – R&D worked closely with Clint to make it that way, and they're probably as protective of it as Clint himself is. Phil would have spent a long time feeling a lot of guilt if something happened to it during his capture.

"So," Clint says after a long moment of awkward silence. "Shooting." He nods toward the target about halfway down the range. An easy mark if Phil were using a gun, and absolutely daunting when he thinks about aiming an arrow for it.

He stubbornly sets his jaw and shifts into the proper stance, then tries not to show the warm glow Clint's approving nod gives him.

And then Clint is moving behind him, adjusting his weight, raising the bow and placing Phil's arms and hands and fingers where they should be, and suddenly the room feels too hot, too close. Phil tries to steady himself and finds it more difficult than it should be.

"I, ah." Phil clears his throat, trying not to feel Clint's warm breath against the side of his neck. "I feel I should warn you that this probably won't end well."

"I have faith in you," Clint says, stepping back. "No man in the world more competent than Phil Coulson." He _hmms_ , walking around to observe Phil's posture. "Looks good."

Clint has him relax and then find the same position again. It takes a few tries before Phil can do it on his own, and he doesn't entirely believe Clint when he says that if he practices enough, eventually it will feel natural.

After a while, Phil starts to forget his anxiety, the ball of fear in his gut when he thinks about what brought them here and why Clint hasn't asked and what Phil's going to eventually have to tell him. It gets shoved to the back of his mind under Clint's impromptu tutelage, and for a few hours, Phil finally stops worrying about it.

Because Clint is here, even though he's seen the truth. Even though he has to be wondering, and even though he'll surely leave when he knows everything, he's here now and Phil wants to enjoy it while he can. For the short time he has.

So Clint shows Phil how to nock an arrow. How far to draw it back, and the easiest way to hold it steady. How to sight down the length. How to release without bracing up like he's waiting for a recoil.

The first arrow goes right over the target, and the second falls short. The third veers too far to the right. Phil can feel his face burning red with embarrassment, but Clint shows a patience with him here that he rarely shows out on the field, and he doesn't let Phil quit until he hits the target several tries later.

It's the outer ring, barely an achievement, but Phil feels a spark of pride and can't help the smile no matter how hard he tries to smother it.

Clint's hand lands on his shoulder, squeezing gently. "See? Nothing to it."

Phil snorts. "Says the man who can hit a moving target dead center while swinging from a trapeze." He knows this to be fact. He's seen it.

Clint beams. "We'll get you there someday," he says with a wink. "Should probably stop for now, though. Your arms are gonna be feeling this tomorrow."

There's a tiny feeling of regret nestled deep in Phil's chest as he hands the bow back to Clint, and Clint must see it, because his smile grows warmer, and he says, "Not letting you off the hook that easy, don't worry. We're doing this three times a week till you can hit the center of the target at least eighty percent of the time."

"Of course we are," he says indulgently, because while Phil has a hard time settling for anything less than perfection in anything he tries to do, he's having a hard time picturing Clint not becoming bored of him – of these lessons – fairly quickly.

Suddenly, though, Clint becomes strangely earnest. "I mean it, Coulson," he says. "I know it may seem like a skill you don't really need, but you never know, right? Someday it could save your life."

Phil blinks, feeling his face warm again with something other than embarrassment. "All right," he finds himself agreeing, too quickly. "All right, Barton."

Clint nods once, firmly. "Good."

~

"So," Clint says a bit later, as they walk back towards Phil's office after cleaning up, closing and locking the shooting range. "Maybe we should talk?"

Phil tries not to grimace. "Probably." They've already put it off for a lot longer than he'd expected to be given.

"We don't have to," Clint says, watching him. "I mean, if you're not comfortable telling me, or whatever. I'd understand."

"It's…" Phil pauses as they reach his office, unlocking it and following Clint inside. The door shuts behind him with a soft _snick_ , and he sighs. "It's not something I've talked about much. But you deserve to know."

Clint sits on the arm of Phil's couch, perched like a hawk. It's almost enough to make him smile for a brief moment.

He leans against the edge of his desk, hands gripping the wood hard, something solid to steady him. "I'm a shapeshifter." He says it without preamble, and then snorts, waving a hand. "Obviously, but that's actually the name of my…species, I suppose." Clint doesn't say anything, doesn't even twitch, so he forces himself to keep going. "There aren't many around anymore…most have been wiped out by hunters, if they didn't kill themselves. It's…not a happy life." He takes a breath; it feels ragged in his lungs. "We're not mutants. It's not an evolution. Our genetics are flawed. Broken. There's something… _other_ inside of us, and I can't explain it to you because no one who's studied it has ever been able to explain it to _me_. I only know that it turns most of us…wrong."

"Wrong how?" Clint asks. His voice is gentler than Phil expected.

"Most shifters I know of lose their minds before their twenty-fifth birthday." He doesn't – can't, _won't_ – mince words here. Not to Clint. "They blow their brains out, or they go on a rampage to force someone else to do it for them. They crave violence the way Agent Romanoff craves chocolate and vodka after a mission, only they crave it all the time. It's not entirely their fault. It's just the life, the way they – the way _we_ – are. It's how we were born."

"They," Clint corrects, eyes dark and intense. "Not you."

Phil closes his eyes. "It could have been me so easily," he admits. "It almost was. Shifters…we lose sight of who we are early on in life. Most of us don't have a sense of self at all; we're too busy trading one life for another and another. It's an incredibly lonely existence, which just makes the madness worse."

"What about your family?" Clint asks, making Phil wonder if he's thinking of his own troubled past. He hopes not, especially now that he's seen first-hand some of what Clint suffered.

"I never knew my father. My mother was a shifter, one of the few who made it to adulthood sane. She made an identity for herself and kept to it, and she was happy, mostly. She had a couple friends, a good job that she could do from home. She was a good person." Phil nods, staring at the ground, remembering. "There was a hunter when I was sixteen who figured out what she was. I still don't know how. He didn't believe there was such a thing as a good monster, and he killed her. I ran. After that, I was on my own."

"Damn." Clint releases a slow breath. "Jesus, I'm sorry."

Phil tries to shrug it off, discomfited by the apology. He'd expected Clint to be disgusted by now, or at least cautious; certainly not calm and caring and… Phil swallows. "It was a long time ago. Fury found me four years later, living off the streets of New York. He helped me create the person I am now. Made me promise to stick to it instead of stealing other people's likenesses. Mostly, it's a promise I've been able to keep."

Clint stands now, brows drawn together as he comes closer. "So, wait, this isn't…the Coulson I know isn't the real…" He shakes his head, clearly frustrated with his inability to phrase what he wants to know.

It's all right though, Phil understands. It makes him deeply uncomfortable to think about, and if it were anyone else asking… But then, he would never have told anyone else even this much, would he? He spreads his hands with a wry smile and says, "I am as you see me. If there was ever a body that was mine, or that I was born with, it's been lost for a long time." He sighs again, hands dropping to hang at his sides. "That's the trouble being a shifter right there. My first shift was when I was three months old; I mimicked a baby from a newspaper article. My next was at nine months, a baby from a television commercial. Every form I took after that, until the one you see now, was just copying another person. It's not even something we can help doing until after puberty. That's why shifters can't go to school, can't have friends, can't be…can't ever be normal, or _human_."

"Coulson." Clint's eyes are wide and full of a compassion that doesn't make any sense, and before Phil can even try to process it, his hands are being taken in Clint's, and his brain just sort of…short-circuits. " _Phil_ ," Clint says. "You're the most human person I know. Stop…stop hating yourself, okay? If I'm not allowed to – your rule, remember? – then you definitely aren't. Of the two of us, you aren't the monster."

"I…" Phil is good with words, he _is_ , he's made it a practice to always know what to say and when to say it, but right now, he doesn't think he could string two together coherently to save his life. Every insecurity he's ever had is surfacing, showing on his face, bleeding from his skin, and he doesn't know how to reel it back in and shove it all down the way he's always done. "Clint, I –"

Clint squeezes his hands hard, hard enough to make Phil's wide eyes fly to his. "Remember where you found me? I was a mess, I was killing people for money, I was _broken_. And you, you brought me back here anyway. You made me want to be better. You made me care. _You_ did that. You did it for Natasha, too, on nothing more than my word. You don't ever get to call yourself a monster after the way you helped us."

"I…Okay," Phil replies faintly, though of course it's not quite that easy. He pulls his hands from Clint's, drags one over his face and uses the other to brace himself against the desk again because he feels dizzy, so completely off-balance. "Anyway, this is me now," he says shakily. "When I dream, this is how I see myself, when before this, I only ever saw an indistinct blur. This is probably the closest I'll ever get to the 'real' me."

"Why'd you pick it?" Clint asks. He's clearly in a tactile mood, the way he sometimes gets, because his hand is now trailing over Phil's arm, making Phil shiver in spite of himself.

"It, ah. It was Fury's idea originally. Quiet, unassuming. The sort of person that doesn't get noticed, which was a big draw for me."

Surprisingly, Clint laughs at that, a harsh-sounding thing that makes his hand clench on Phil's arm. "Are you kidding me?" he asks.

Phil stares at him. "All this, and that's what you think I'm going to kid about?"

Another laugh bubbles out of Clint, and he steps closer, letting his forehead fall to Phil's shoulder, hands clutching Phil's arms like he simply can't help himself from grabbing and holding.

Phil swallows hard, prays Clint doesn't notice how fast his heart is suddenly beating. "Barton?" he asks, tentatively.

"It's just." Clint turns his face just the slightest bit into the curve of Phil's neck, making Phil feel like he's going to come right out of his own skin any moment. He breathes out slowly, a soft sigh. "I've always noticed you, sir." His lips graze the sensitive skin there. "Always. Shit," he says, and then he's pulling away, taking one slow step back and shoving his hands deep in his pockets, mouth tugging into an apologetic grimace. "Sorry. Just, y'know. Saying. That's, uh, probably some kind of irony right there."

"I can't…" Phil can't breathe, or think, or speak, or do much of anything, actually, but Clint shakes his head, stalling his pathetic attempts at words.

"I get it," he says. His lips quirk up in a very small smile that manages to feel as warm as sunlight and still look just the slightest bit sad at the edges. "Kinda out of the blue, right? And maybe…maybe you've got some shit to work out before you'd want –" He waves a hand. "You know. Just. Since we're sharing, I thought you should know. I mean, after this long, it'd take more then some freaky DNA or whatever to be a deal breaker, okay?"

Phil closes his eyes, has to gather himself together one thread at a time, and even then, he's not sure he's managed it adequately. But when he looks up again, he can meet Clint's gaze and recognize what he's seeing there. Recognize the invitation, and the desire, and the caring, and beyond all that, the friendship that's come to mean so much to him. Clint's not turning away from him, by some miracle. And he _won't_.

"You're right," Phil finally says, when he's sure he can speak. "I'm not ready for anything like that right now." Up until this moment, he'd always thought it impossible. One more thing that his nature had taken away from him forever. He'd forgotten just how good Clint is at _impossible_. "But for what it's worth, I'd…I'd like to be. I'd like to try. Just…slowly." So he can try to get his bearings, try to understand how to do something like this with another person when he never has before. He's wanted for so long, but he's never allowed himself –

"I can do slow," Clint says, cutting into his thoughts, eyes so full of hope it knocks Phil's heart into skipping several beats. How can anyone want something like him that much?

"This is not how I expected this conversation to go," Phil admits with a breathless, shocked laugh.

"Well, sir," Clint says, and now he's wearing his usual cocky grin, familiar and comforting. "You know I'm full of surprises."

"Phil," Phil says. He clears his throat, fighting a blush at Clint's raised eyebrow. "If we're doing this, you can call me Phil. Off the clock, of course."

"Okay." Clint's coming close again, close enough to touch Phil, and he does, trailing his thumb along the line of Phil's jaw when he says his name, barely more than a whisper at first, and then louder, as intense as the look in his eyes. " _Phil_."

Phil isn't sure which of them moves first. All he knows is the sudden slide of Clint's lips against his, the feel of Clint's hands at his waist, the sound of Clint's soft moan ringing in his ears.

Phil's never done this before, never allowed himself to be this close to another person in his life, but Clint doesn't seem to mind his inexperience, and he doesn't push for more than Phil is ready to give, either. Their lips move together in a sort of dance, coming together and pulling away, opening just enough to taste each other's breath but not any more than that. Phil feels the tip of Clint's tongue licking along his bottom lip, but it never goes further, never seeks entrance to Phil's mouth. Clint is a long, hard line of warmth all along Phil's body, but he's gentle, so gentle as he holds Phil against him.

It would be so easy to become lost in this, and for the first time in his life, Phil wants to. He so desperately wants to, which is why he finally pulls away. "I shouldn't—I haven't told you everything yet, we need to –"

"Shh." Clint presses a finger to Phil's mouth, shaking his head. "I think right now, what we need is to go lie down somewhere so you can sleep. And so I can watch over you while you do, because every time I close my eyes, I still see you cuffed to that fucking chair." It's only because he's so close, Phil practically clinging to him, that Phil can feel the shudder go through Clint's body. "That okay, boss?" His jaw is clenched, eyes hooded like he's waiting for the same rejection Phil's been expecting in one way or another this whole time.

And the thing is, there is more, a lot more Phil needs to tell him. Eventually he'll have to confess to Clint about the memory transference, about the things he can still see when he closes his eyes, the past that isn't his but that he still dreams about when he sleeps, all the things he wasn't able to block out fast enough. He'll need to tell Clint more about the hunters, and how they never stop coming for things like him, about how they could hurt anyone who gets in their way if it means killing him. He'll have to tell him about the strength he hides, and the contacts he's forced to wear ninety percent of the time if he knows there are cameras around, and so many other things.

But Clint's right, he's exhausted. Wrung out in a way that even interrogation and torture hadn't left him, and he can admit that the idea of falling asleep with Clint right there by his side is incredibly tempting. Knowing that he's safe, that for just a little while he doesn't have to wear a mask and be the strong, unflappable Phil Coulson everyone expects him to be. He can just be _him_ , whoever – whatever – he is.

He also finds himself craving anything that will wipe that look from Clint's face and put the warmth back. The smile that Phil fears he's already grown too attached to, the one he's already not sure he can stand to live without again.

"Okay," he says, resting his forehead against Clint's. He takes one of Clint's hands in his own and threads their fingers together, smiles when Clint lets out a trembling, relieved sigh. "Okay."


End file.
